By Arthur Kemp
It is one of the bitterest ironies of South Africa that the policy of apartheid – which Afrikaners clung to for decades as their only hope and salvation against domination – was actually an unworkable and unreal system that led directly to the Afrikaners’ downfall.
Political power derives from physical occupation: not historical rights, not title deeds, not “moral right” – only occupation. The people who occupy an area determine the nature of society there.
Two examples will prove this reality.
The first. The American Indians were the dominant cultural creators in North America before 1500. After that year, however, the continent was filled with European immigrants. The Indian civilization was therefore replaced by a European civilization because Europeans physically occupied the continent.
The second. The state of Israel only became a political reality after the Zionist movement ensured that Jews became a majority of the population in Palestine. Before this majority occupation, the state of Israel did not exist.
Then what about South Africa?
In 1904, the first official census in the Transvaal was carried out by the British authorities. There were 297,277 whites and 937,127 non-whites in the Transvaal. (See “Transvaal”, 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica). The latter figure included 135,042 foreign blacks who worked in the mines, who were therefore temporary residents. If this number is excluded, the actual native black population of the Transvaal in 1904 was therefore only 802,085.
Some 55 years later, in 1960, there were 1,455,372 white and 4,769,680 black people in the Transvaal (See “Transvaal”, Encyclopedia Britannica, 1966). For the entire country, the figures were even more alarming: 4.5 million whites against approximately 35 million black people, plus 3 million browns and almost a million of Asian origin.
What caused this massive population change within a mere 50 years?
The answer is simple. The use of “cheap” labour. Afrikaans and English-speaking white people in South Africa became addicted to the use of cheap black labour. In every house there were servants. In every garden there was a “garden boy”.
Foreign laborers were used at every construction site. In every factory “cheap” black labor was used. Every mine and every industry depended on black labor. No farmer could run a farm without dozens of non-white laborers… and the list goes on and on.
Corrected: White people’s use of this cheap labor enabled the black population to increase in numbers until they overwhelmed “white South Africa” in numbers.
This increase is based on the fact that black people were able to take advantage of the benefits of a modern society: medicine, schools, orderly service delivery, and a modern, functioning state.
Advanced medical services caused a dramatic reduction in the black child mortality rate with the increase remaining the same.
The jobs, money, and subsequent modern infrastructure provided by white people caused this massive population increase.
Apartheid never even tried to address this core problem. On the contrary, the use of black labor is built into the system – the pass laws are self-evident proof of this. The ordered use of black labor was part of the apartheid laws!
There has never been an example where a civilization, any civilization, created by any group was preserved in an area where that group became a minority.
Apartheid’s plan was to impose social segregation on top of economic integration. This policy is based on a blatant misrepresentation, namely that black labor could be used to keep the wheels of society going, but would still promote white rule.
So it was the lie of apartheid. That it was possible, through segregation, to ensure that black people could not rule over a country in which they are the majority.
It should be mentioned that many white South African citizens actually believed this lie. It can be said without any intentional irony that the definition of a white South African citizen is “someone who would rather be killed in his bed than make it himself”.
A cynical observer spoke of the “lawnmower syndrome” among South African white citizens. A lawnmower sits quietly in its storage until it is needed. Then it cuts the grass, and is put back “in its place”, where it never causes problems.
The reality of alien labor is, of course, dramatically different.
Who really thought that masses of black citizens, who do all the work in the urban areas, would be content to exercise their political rights only in the “home countries”? Apparently only the apartheid believers.
Another important part of the apartheid lie was that military force could keep the system in place.
The demographic reality contradicts this statement. The white population was, at its peak, about 5 million, while the black population was more than 30 million (at that time).
Of the 5 million white people, less than 800,000 were men of military serviceable age, but it was also not possible to call them all up at one time.
The state therefore had to rely on a military force of around 120,000 soldiers and 60,000 police officers (of which the majority of the latter were black, of course…) to maintain law and order over a population of millions.
Given that demographic reality, it can be seen that apartheid was not sustainable by military means.
Yet the lie continued, and young white South African citizens were drafted into the army and police to fight and die for a system that was doomed.
The second leg of the apartheid policy was the so-called Great Apartheid – the creation of independent black homelands.
There is no question as to whether the homelands were indeed the territories originally owned by the black tribes. But only a fool would deny that the offer of work by the white people – with the accompanying improved living standards – made it inevitable that black people would go to live outside the tribal homelands.
This situation led to the fact that even the so-called “white areas” in the cities were not actually white – if one takes into account the presence of black servants, gardeners, laborers and so on.
In a nutshell, the apartheid system refused to accept the basic demographic reality: those who occupy a space determine the nature of society in that space, regardless of who that space originally belonged to.
“White South Africa”‘s fate was determined when the territorial division was not adjusted to take demographic realities into account. The reliance on black labor was the primary driver of this misconception.
From the above it is clear that the use of black labor was the direct cause of the fall of apartheid and also white rule in South Africa.
So the question arises. Given the current situation, can the Afrikaners be saved?
The answer is relatively simple. In a united South Africa, in which they are the permanent minority, the answer is “no.” In a smaller region where Afrikaners form the majority population, the answer is “yes”.
No minority has ever survived indefinitely in the face of a growing hostile majority – especially one in South Africa where the material difference between white and black is so great.
There is only one way in which Afrikaners can be saved. Firstly, there must be a general acceptance of the relationship between demography and political power. Secondly, it must also be accepted that survival depends on own labor and majority ownership of a geographical area.
Only if a majority of Afrikaners understand these two truths, can we even begin to talk about a practical plan to save them.
In practical terms, this means that Afrikaners must create an area or region in which they form the demographic majority. This area will, simply as a result of demographic realities, be a much smaller area than that which was claimed as “white South Africa” at the time.
Even more important, and here the understanding of the relationship between own labor and demographics applies, everyone who moves to such an area must be prepared to do their own labor.
If, for example, 500,000 Afrikaners were to settle in the Orania region, that area would overnight de factoand later, inevitably, de jure, Becoming an Afrikaner state.
This is the only way Afrikaners can be spared the fate of all modern minorities in Africa. They must say goodbye to their dependence on black labour, and seek their salvation in a smaller area where they form a demographic majority.
This is the harsh reality. All political activities that are not directed towards this are irrelevant and chaff in the wind.
